Chapter Text
November
Kara was easily able to operate the reduction machine and restore Metropolis to its proper size and place. The citizens had been in a kind of suspended animation, not aware of the passage of time, but aware that time was passing. Most tried not to make sense of that, just trying to forget the experience.
The League returned to Watchtower, where Kara used the graviton manipulators to tow Brainiac’s ship to a stable orbit.
“I’ll let the Lantern Corps know,” Hal said. “Probably even run it all the way up to the Guardians. They’d definitely want to know what this guy was up to, and that he’s been dealt with.” He looked at Kal and Kara. “The Guardians might even be able to help with restoring the stolen cities, but. . . I can’t make any promises.”
“Why not?” Barry asked.
Hal sighed. “It’s complicated, but the Guardians are real ‘non-interference’ types.”
Barry scoffed. “For them, ‘non-interference’ means creating an army of space cops?”
“Like I said, they’re complicated.”
Bruce cleared his throat. “If you can restore Kandor, what are you going to do with it?”
Kara shrugged. “Set it in orbit somewhere in the solar system. Maybe a counter-Earth orbit. With atmosphere shields and gravity generators, it can be a self-sustaining Kryptonian colony.”
“What’s the city’s population?” Bruce asked.
“Unknown,” Kara replied. “Records are spotty. Perhaps a million.”
Bruce looked hard at Clark. “A million Kryptonians, all with your powers, running around the solar system. You sure that’s a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” Kal admitted. “But we’ll have time to think about it.” He looked at the bottle city of Kandor, resting on its shelf in Brainiac’s ship. “If what he said is true, it’ll take us a long time to figure out how to restore it. Maybe we’ll find someplace better for them. Maybe humanity will be ready to share their star with my people.” He looked at Bruce, smiled. “I have hope.”
Bruce smiled back.
They both turned to the captive Brainiac.
“So what do we do with him?” Batman asked.
Kal glared hard at Brainiac. “The Phantom Zone.”
“Agreed wholeheartedly,” Kara said.
“What is a ‘Phantom Zone’?” Brainiac asked.
“Oh, knowledge you don't possess?” Kal said with a wicked smirk. “Please, allow me to share a bit of technological distinctiveness with you.”
Barry raised his hand. “Uh, I'd like to know, too.”
“Deal me in on that,” Batman said.
“Kara?” Kal said. “You get it better than I do.”
“We exist in four dimensions,” Kara explained. “Three physical dimensions, plus time. The Phantom Zone is the eighth dimension, a place of. . . well, nothing, basically. Late in its history, Krypton discovered this dimension, and how to create portals to it. It became a prison, a place to put those deemed the most dangerous and incorrigible of criminals.”
Barry blinked in disbelief. “You banished criminals to a dimension of nothing?”
“Only the absolute worst of the worst,” Kal said. “Even then, I agree it seems a bit harsh. But in this case, there's really nowhere safer to put him.”
“For how long?” Bruce asked.
“Forever,” Clark answered.
Bruce narrowed his eyes. “No. We don't get to pass judgement.”
“What else can we do?” Clark asked. “What laws on Earth cover his crimes? What court has jurisdiction over a Coluan?”
Bruce looked at Hal.
Hal nodded. “I do. By the authority of the Guardians of Oa, I have jurisdiction over this space sector.” He looked apologetically at Bruce. “And Brainiac's crimes merit extreme punishment. I vote yes on this Phantom Zone.”
“As do I,” J'onn said.
“No,” Bruce said. “This is too much.”
“It's not a death sentence,” Diana said.
“Only on a technicality,” Bruce replied. “Banish him from this reality, put a bullet in his head, what's the practical difference?”
“That’s not an invalid point,” Kara admitted.
Lori scoffed. “If that's the direction we're taking this conversation in, what about what he did? Shrinking Metropolis and holding it in some kind of stasis or whatever, dropping a nuke on it – what's the practical difference, Batman?” Lori glared at Brainiac. “Sounds to me like sending him to extradimensional hell is exactly the right amount of eye for an eye.”
“Justice isn't about vengeance,” Bruce said passionately. “It's about balance.”
“So what's the balance here?” Clark asked. “What, in your mind, is justice for what he did?”
Bruce wracked his brain. . . and couldn't think of anything. And in the back of his mind a question refused to be ignored: would he be arguing as passionately if Brainiac had targeted Gotham?
So finally, he sighed. “Alright.” He scowled at Clark. “But I want it on the record: I don't like it.”
Clark nodded. “Agreed.” And it was an open question if he agreed with Bruce's opinion being on record. . . or if he agreed with Bruce's opinion.
Then Clark looked at Barry. “Flash?”
“Uh. . . does it have to be unanimous?”
“We'd like to hear your thoughts,” Clark said.
Barry shuffled his feet. “Uh, yeah. This. . . this is too big for me. So. . . I guess, put me down as ‘abstain’.”
Clark nodded. He, Kara, J'onn, Diana, Lori, and Hal were all in varying levels of agreement.
The Justice League brought Brainiac down to the Fortress. Kal took charge of the Phantom Zone projector and banished Brainiac from these dimensions.
That decision was subject to some controversy over the following years. Some were concerned about Superman playing judge and jury, others accepting the argument that Earth law simply didn't have the scope to cover Brainiac's crimes, nor jurisdiction over them, since they had technically occurred in space. Still others agreed with Batman, seeing banishment from this plane of existence as different from execution only on a technicality.
Finally, after most of the fallout of Brainiac's attack had been dealt with, Clark returned home.
As he entered the apartment the three of them shared, Lana and Lois were all over him.
“Oh, Clark!” Lana said, squeezing him as tightly as she could, kissing him desperately.
“Thank you, Clark,” Lois said, her arms around him, her lips finding his as soon as Lana relinquished them.
Clark pulled back, gazed into green and violet eyes. “Are you two okay?”
Lois sighed. “It was. . . not fun.”
“It was like being frozen in time, but aware of being frozen.” Lana shook her head. “I can't wrap my brain around it. It was horrible.”
“But yeah,” Lois said. “We're fine.”
Clark breathed a sigh of relief, even as fresh anger welled within him. Brainiac had hurt the women he loved. He was paying for that, but a small part of Clark wanted him to pay more.
Clark let that thought go, focused on his loves. He held them tight, comforting them and being comforted by them.
Then Lana moved in his arms, a special, familiar kind of movement. Lois looked up at him, and there was a specific kind of heat in her amethyst gaze.
Clark grinned. “This count as saving the world?” he asked playfully.
“No,” Lois said. “But you did save our personal asses. Seems only fair those personal asses reward you for it.”
Lana giggled, rolling her eyes. “Such a way with words, Lois.”
“Sounds good,” Clark said. “But just hold on a minute, there's something I want to show you first.”
“Clark,” Lana whined.
Clark smiled. “Trust me,” he said, taking their hands and leading them to the wormhole projector.
Seconds later, they were in the Fortress.
“I've been thinking,” Clark said, approaching the console. “And. . . I know we've been talking, but, with. . . with what just happened, when–” he drew in a shuddering breath. “When I. . . I thought you were. . . gone, I. . . I don’t want to talk anymore. I don’t want to keep waiting for our future, I want us to start making it.”
Lana knitted her eyebrows as she looked at him. “Clark, what are you saying?”
Clark activated a program he'd developed on the Fortress computers. “Here. Data on, well, every ring design on Earth. Pick one you like, mix design elements to taste–” he demonstrated. “Then, when you have one you like, push this control.” He touched a crystal protrusion. “And the fabricator will make it for you, fitted perfectly.”
Lana blinked. “Clark, are you. . ?”
“There is no real right way to do this, but. . .” He took Lois and Lana's left hands in his.
Got down on one knee.
“Lana Lang, Lois Lane. . . will you marry me?”
A beatific smile split Lana’s face, tears glittered in her emerald eyes. “Yes, Clark. Yes.”
“Yes,” Lois said softly, a small, loving smile on her lips.
Clark smiled, stood, and pulled them to him, hugging them tightly. “I love you both,” he said.
Keira Kent burst into the apartment she shared with Lena Luthor. “Lena!”
“Kara!” In a flash, Lena was in her arms, hugging her tightly.
“Are you okay?” Kara asked, gazing deep into Lena's green eyes.
“I'm fine. We're all fine.” She gazed into Kara’s brilliant blue eyes, dulled by her glasses. “Thank you.”
They kissed, and hugged, and moved to the couch to cuddle and comfort each other. Kara told Lena about finding Kandor on Brainiac's ship, the difficulty that would be involved in trying to restore it, the hope in the possibility that more of Krypton might survive. Lena told Kara about what being shrunk by Brainiac had been like, and they discussed hypotheses about what it meant, how the technology functioned. Trying to eliminate their fear by dissecting, analyzing, categorizing, labeling, and understanding what had caused it.
Diana brought a delegation of Amazons to Metropolis. Versed in magic, divinity, and other things that didn't readily yield to logic, experienced in caring for the psyches of their functionally immortal Sisters, the Amazons did their best to help the people of Metropolis come to grips with what happened, healing their minds and sharing the love and peace the gods had made them to spread.
In her holding cell, Amanda Waller raised her head, utterly unsurprised. “I wondered how long it’d be before you came calling.”
“Not very long,” Batman said. “Just had to get everything in order.” He held up one of the implants used to control the Suicide Squad.
“And what’s that?” Waller asked innocently.
“One of the implants you used to control your Task Force X. Designed by Brainiac.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Waller replied coolly.
“Right,” Batman said. “Brainiac got in touch with you somehow. Offered you these implants, and other upgrades, to make your Suicide Squad more effective, because he knew that if he gave you the right tools, inevitably, we’d come into conflict with them. Either trying to take you down ourselves, or you sending them to eliminate us. It was only a matter of time, and based on Brainiac’s timetable, not much of it.”
Waller narrowed her eyes, glaring at Batman. “You’ll never be able to prove it.”
“Actually, we can,” Batman replied. “We have his ship, remember? Dissecting his technology to try and figure out how to restore all the other cities he’s ‘collected.’ We know exactly what he was up to, and what your role in it all was.”
Waller’s glare intensified. “What do you want?”
“Plead guilty,” Batman said. “Let everyone know you were wrong. Tell everyone how sorry you are for letting your ambition get the better of you.”
“This was never about ambition, Mr. Wayne.”
“Wasn’t it?”
Waller’s face was stony, but her eyes were fire. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Fine. Still, plead guilty. Don’t draw this all out any more than it needs to be. Stop being part of the problem.”
Waller scoffed. “And what will you do when Superman and Superwoman become part of the problem?”
“They won’t,” Bruce said.
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes. I can.”
Waller and Bruce stared each other down.
And in the end, Waller was the one who looked away.
Lex snarled at the news playing on the prison television. The anchor lauding Superman and the Justice League for saving Metropolis from an alien menace.
Lex had tried to point at this as proof he was right. Brainiac was an alien with fantastic power, and unarguably a threat. Superman was an alien with fantastic power, so logically must also be a threat. But with everyone seeing the Justice League as their saviors, and the League themselves insisting on giving all credit specifically to Superman and Superwoman, no one was buying what Lex was selling.
Lex glared at the reporter on the television, and the picture of Superman pasted over her shoulder.
“I'm going to get you, Superman,” Lex growled. “Someday, some way, somehow, I am going to get you.”